A whole lotta bull

Saturday night was our neighborhood bullfight and BBQ party. Less people showed up than expected, but we still had a great time. Here's how it went...

It's like hurricane season, everything that the bull can get to gets boarded up. That's the prepwork that goes on the day before and the day of the actual fight.

Then we worked on the food we were serving. I had never made potato salad before (mostly because I do not like potato salad) but we had many potatoes in the house, we decided this was a good idea.
We left out celery and green onions, mostly because we didn't have any, but also because I don't like green onions.

This pans we found at the commissary can in handy.

And from what everyone told me, the potato salad was great. In fact, I tried some and I did like it.

We decided on fruit salad for our dessert. So we bought these 3 different looking melons...

and some nice looking red grapes...

and cut them up. They looked so nice inside, except...

they were all...

GREEN melons on the inside.

Thankfully I had RED grapes to give this fruit salad some color!

For the main course we were grilling burgers and hot dogs, so the baked beans were a nice side dish.

Beverages for everyone.

It wasn't until half time when everyone really wanted to eat, but we did get set up in advance. Sadly, these are the buns that are available to us at the commissary. They come frozen and squished. We now know we can buy buns locally, so we'll try that next time.

Here's the before picture in the outdoor kitchen. I love that we have a sink right there.

Brand new! The old ones were rusted. That hole in the back turned out to be the perfect spot to keep the beans HOT.

Isn't that so cool? It was really exciting to have the outdoor kitchen up and running.

One of Ryan's coworkers brought (his wife made them) these for us. This is lumpia which is a traditional Phillipino dish.

Our landlord brought these for us. I have NO CLUE what they are called in Portugese, but they are pork. They make them and sell them in their store.

So of course I went with a spicy black bean burger that I made inside.

Our neighbor (the one we see less often) had all this food at his house so he invited all of my party over in to his yard. These are all traditional Azorean dishes for bull fights. Some I can not figure out wehat they are, but some I did. The pizza looked good, btu I did not try any.

This version of deviled eggs was really neat and tasted good. It was tuna salad with the egg yolk mixed in and then served in the white and topped with a green olive. I really liked this.

This was a baked cheese inside a scooped out bread. I am not sure what the red stuff really was, looked like peppers.

Here's where their party got a little Americanized.

This is a fish dish. Looks super crispy.

And now for the bull fight pictures. You can see how many people were around in the streets. Our house was near the ending line (where the bull can't go past), so there is always less action at the end, but I did get some good bull shots.

I love this picture. What was this man thinking?

These guys control the bull.

He messed up my favorite flowers.

So that was it for our bull fight. Actually once the sun went down it was hard to take photos. When it was done there werea few stragglers that managed to locate our house. Overall it was successful and we will have a bigger party next year. We were not sure what to expect and if it really went by our house, so we didn't want to have a big party and then have no bull. But in the end it was a blast and a whole lotta bull!

I apologize for not posting this yesterday, like I wanted to, but I was travelling all day. I did manage to get to the States so I am now visiting my family in Baltimore. I was so jet lagged last night and I am feeling well rested right now and ready to visit my family and friends.

Stay tuned for fun pics from Baltimore, NYC and Philly.

QUESTION: What's the largest party you have ever had in your own home? Any themed parties?

HAPPY MONDAY EVERYONE, thanks for reading!